Just another UMW Blogs.org weblog
What is it about? We are working on that.
This time, it is about instructional technologists and if they serve their faculty well by looking out into the future, experimenting with the newest tools.
On board this time - Jim Groom, Michael Willits, and Jerry Slezak.
I’m assembling information for the final version of the printed program for Faculty Academy 2006, and I’m astonished by the variety, energy, and creativity I see here. Just as I learn something most thoroughly when I teach it, I see the individual program events with new clarity and detail as I touch (well, copy-and-paste into Patrick’s excellent xml-generated framework) every one into the final documents. From astronomy to business administration to art history, this program is a veritable encyclopedia of professional and pedagogical development at our university. I confess that I’m humbled by it, and grateful to have colleagues like these.
I also want to recognize the true engines behind Faculty Academy 2006, the Instructional Technology Specialists in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. Martha, Patrick, Jim, Andy, and Jerry have committed their talents and energies to some extremely productive and interesting partnerships with faculty at UMW, and it’s clear to me from their own reflections, as well as this program, that they’re already thinking about where to go from here. I am privileged to work with a great, great staff.
This year’s program, complete with session abstracts, is available on the Faculty Academy website. To get your spiffy printed version, with Martha’s great flyer on the cover, you’ll just have to attend the event. I hope to see you there.
The countdown to Faculty Academy 4.0 is ticking along. Recognizing that we wanted to document, document, document this event, we took a page from Penn State’s Teaching & Learning with Technology Symposium and set up our own conference blog. (Thanks to D’Arcy Norman for pointing out the Penn State example in the first place.)
In addition to the blog, we’re also posting additional conference information and resources (program, speaker bios, etc.). We’ve taken the plunge and left registration open on the site until the conference is over, so any attendee can sign up and add posts and content to the site.
We’re using WordPress as the engine, and I’ve spent the last few days tweaking the install and adding some critical plugins. It’s been a real education for me–learning how to trick out WordPress is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.
One goal we had was to do some Flickr integration into the blog, so that conference attendees who upload photos to Flickr with the official conference tag can easily view those photos on the site and add them to posts. Two great plugins by tan tan noodles have basically done the trick. The flickr photo album plugin adds a “Photos” tab to the new upload box on the post page in WP 2.x. Since the plugin requires a user account to set it up and we’re interested in displaying photos not from one user but from all users using a particular tag, I had to trick the plugin a little. Basically, I created an empty Flickr account and used that to setup the plugin; then when users go to post, while they see no photos by default, they can easily change the options in the Photos tab to display those images tagged by any Flickr user with “facultyacademy2006.”
We’re using the Flickr DHTML Badge to display an animated block of facultyacademy2005- and facultyacademy2006-tagged photos in the blog sidebar. Interestingly, this plugin asks for a username, but we discovered if you leave it blank and just put in the tags you’re looking for, it works just the way we need.
We also decided that for this blog we wanted to deprecate WordPress categories, and instead encourage users to generate tags for posts. Ultimate Tag Warrior did the trick. This is an amazingly powerful plugin. It requires a fair amount of under-the-hood work to capitalize on the more advanced features (displaying Tag Clouds, on-the-fly tag editing from the blog view, etc.), but, if you’re brave enough, it’s worth it.
Most of the rest of the work I’ve been doing has been tweaking the actual WP install. This kind of work makes me nervous since it sets us up for potential disaster if we ever have to upgrade the site, but I decided the changes I wanted to make were worth the risk. Most of these have to do with recognizing that we’re opening the blog up to any conference attendee to post–so an awareness of usability needs to be there that I wouldn’t necessarily have on my own blog. One example: Since we’re going with tags instead of categories, I wanted to remove any reference to categories that authors might see (to avoid confusion). On my own blog, this wouldn’t be a concern since I’d just learn to ignore the categories option. But, we want people to be able to post to the blog with a minimal amount of confusion and the least amount of one-on-one support. So, I edited the post editor to comment out the “Categories” box.
Like I said, all of this has been a great education in customizing WordPress, and I have some pretty serious ideas about how this could be relevant to what we’re doing with blogging for teaching and learning. . .
I’ve listened to a bunch of great stories lately, about a bunch of great people. Muhammad Ali helping some college students on the side of the road. Bobby Kennedy being a politician who can relate to the common man, despite being a spoiled rich kid. And the pain and suffering in Jefferson Davis‘ life during the civil war era. These are just some of the snippetts I heard while editing the 18 Great Lives Biographies over the last two weeks (there are 19 total). While I’m glad to have a break from it, I will want to go back and listen to them when I have a chance. There are some riveting speakers in this wonderful series, and it’s the 2nd year of offering the webcasts (check out the 2005 archives).
I used a combination of Adobe Premiere Pro 2, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Audition, and TechSmith’s SnagIt. With all of the blogging that goes on in DTLT at Mary Washington, it seemed like presenting the videos in a blog was a natural. There are some technical and practical hurdles to overcome however. The obvious advantages are the ability to subscribe to the blog and be informed when newest webcasts are available. Also there is an opportunity to comment on the webcasts. The obstacles are the standard problems you have when you try to do video on the web. What format do you use? What quality setting? How much bandwidth will these take?
Fortunately the bandwidth issue, while not unlimited, has been greatly improved since last year. Our hosting company, Bluehost, currently offers 400GB of bandwidth per month. Compare that to the 25GB we had a year ago for the Great Lives videos. We use the Real format for videos for some very basic reasons. From my observations it gives the best quality-to-file-size ratio for a format that is cross-platform. Windows Media is slightly better in quality, but it doesn’t work quite as well as Real Video on a Mac. And believe me, I don’t think Real is by any means perfect. I considered QuickTime, but the files are just too large with an acceptable quality setting. I love the Flash video format, but those are intended for shorter duration videos (10-15 minutes, or less). I even considered DivX, but it requires yet another download/plugin that, at this point, hasn’t reached a saturation point yet (maybe I should help this along?).
At this point in the school year, it is final exam time. I guess you could consider the Great Lives Webcasts to be my final exam. What have I learned over the past year about supporting this type of communication? With no intention of being trite, the answer is, a lot. Video on the web is one of those areas of specialization in computers that has a world of its own, with its own community and language. The next step in the learning process is to begin to synthesize my knowledge of web video into new modes of presenting information, and hopefully, new modes of learning. What I’ve also learned is that it’s all about the workflow.
As THEA435 wraps up (we’ll be gathering this evening to watch students’ final projects), I thought I’d take a moment to post this image.
This is a scan of a scrap of paper on which I took notes during a meeting with Andy and Jerry last fall. The notes grew out of a conversation in which we realized we needed to focus on the bare necessities for the content gallery we were building to support the class. We had been in an experimentation phase for a few weeks, and had quickly gotten sidetracked. We were focussing on all the cool things we COULD do rather than all the necessary things we HAD to do. This scrap reflects a moment in which we regrouped and, I think, it was a transformative moment in the planning process.
The items listed here were the essential , fundamental features that our content gallery needed to have. Since my scribbles are hard to decipher
* upload
* url/download
*find/search
*metadata
*under our control
*RSS
Basically we needed students to be able to upload (via a Web interface–not FTP) any kind of media. The items needed to have unique url’s for pointing and downloading. There needed to be tools for finding/searching items. We needed to be able to add useful metadata (so that finding/searching was fruitful). The whole thing needed to be under our control. And (and I underlined this) it had to be RSS-enabled.
Ultimately, what grew out of the conversation was the Coppermine Gallery. For the most part, I think that’s been a successful solution. We’ll have to do some post-game analysis once the class is over to decide if we’d go with it again.
But, most importantly, this scrap of paper is a reminder that we need to remember to keep our eyes on the prize and try not to get too distracted.
poster
Originally uploaded by rushaw.
Promotion of the 2006 Faculty Academy on Instructional Technologies continues with the establishment of the official Flickr tag for the event.
Use the tag facultyacademy2006 for all photos related to this year’s Academy. As you’ll see, the first entry is this year’s poster, created by Martha Burtis, which summarizes the event.
Preparations for the 11th Annual Faculty Academy continue, and yesterday another milestone was reached when Jon Udell sent us the abstract for his keynote address. Although you can find it on the Faculty Academy website, it’s worth quoting here in full, as a reminder of how vital Jon’s work is to all of us in higher education:
When Merriam-Webster identified “blog” as one of the words looked up most often in 2004, its definition was: “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks.” That’s true, but says nothing about the network in which the blog participates. Readers and writers will want to understand, and apply, the dynamic principles that govern this evolving network. Everything we (should have) learned from “The Elements of Style” remains valid, but there are radical new possibilities that never would have occurred to Strunk and White. I’ll present and discuss examples from both realms.
I’ll also illustrate and discuss the role of so-called new media. These are, in fact, old media. Our ancient modes of storytelling were painting, song, oratory, and drama. Print was the innovation. Now that we can project the spoken word and moving pictures online, we’re challenged to master a range of technological skills. As we do so, let’s embrace the opportunity to reconnect with our cultural roots.
NB: in addition to his dynamite topic(s), Jon has also carefully crafted the abstract with his audience in view. In a return email I accused him of being an English professor in disguise (talk about high crimes and misdemeanors), or at the very least a college president.
The excitement builds, and the countdown to FA 11 continues. Turn it up to 11!
Last week, Jerry Slezak, Andy Rush, and I sat down with Gregg Stull to talk about the status of the Theatre 435 project. We recorded the interview, and a podcast of that conversation is attached.
The audio isn’t perfect (a cell phone interrupts at one point and the air-conditioning came on for a strange, 10-second burst at another point), and the volume was pretty low. Hopefully, my amateur audio editing skills improved it slightly (increasing the volume and then taking care of the resulting hiss was a particular challenge). If nothing else, it’s been a learning experience for me!
This is our first Smooth Elephant podcast; we hope many more will follow.
Note: We’re using Groove IT (by Denis Kitchen) from the PodSafe Music Network as the background track on the podcast.
DTLT will be hosting our 11th Annual Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology on May 16 and 17, 2006 in Combs Hall on the UMW campus in Fredericksburg, VA.
Thus, the planning, arranging, thinking, longing, obsessing, anticipating and just plain work of preparing for the conference is in full swing.
At this conference, the faculty are the stars - they present on their successes, insights, and struggles in the classroom with instructional technology. We also invite outside speakers to help us broaden our thinking about technology in teaching and learning. Hands-on Worshops are also offered as a way to expand our skills sets.
This year, our Keynote Speaker is Jon Udell. His regular gig is writing for InfoWorld magazine - specifically he is the “Strategic Developer” columnist. But don’t let that fool you - Jon is a teacher at heart. If you travel over to our FA 2006 web site you will find some links to screencasts (little movies that describe and demonstrate) that he has produced. He will be speaking on the topic of “21st Century Literacy” on May 17th.
So, between now and then, we will be getting ready for a jam packed 2 day conference.
If you are interested in presenting, or just attending one or both days (no charge to attend, plus a boxed lunch for registered participants!), come on over to the Faculty Academy web site for more info on submitting a proposal or registering to attend. Hope to see you on May 16th and 17th!
Dr. Craig Naylor from the Department of Music is the organizer of a small group of students called the Electronic Music Collective. These students create original electronic compositions using the Electronic Music Studio.
Each year, the Collective does a concert where they play back the compositions they created that semester. I attended this concert a few years back, and was stunned by the quality of what the students had produced. One thing that also struck me what how those compositions were played once, and then never heard again unless you were pals with the composer.
Once Podcasting hit the scene, I thought of how it could be a great way for students in the EMC to showcase their work. After some repeated nagging from Martha Burtis and me, Dr. Naylor agreed to try this out this semester.
So, we are proud to announce the Electronic Music Collective blog and podcast site: http://marthaburtis.net/collective/. We are just getting this up and running, but expect great things in the future as the students in the Collective decide how they want to use this new broadcast media.
For this project, we built the EMC a group blog in WordPress. Each student has the ability to post to the blog, so this is a group project. In the future, we imagine graduated Collective members could still post their compositions, ideas or comments to maintain a connection to the group.
We also made use of the PodPress plug-in to make posting the MP3 files easy, and provide an easy way for visitors to the blog to either listen online, download the file, or subscribe to the collective podcast feed.
When you have a hankering for some original electronic music, give the EMC blog and podcast a listen!
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